Approach:
The overall approach is to thoroughly characterize new exotic and emerging plant pathogens at multiple levels: epidemiologically epidemics will be followed and modeled by traditional and newer stochastic methods at the regional, and plantation levels, biologically the pathosystems will be characterized at the level of host-pathogen-vector interaction, as well as at the cellular, molecular and/or biochemical levels. New pathogens will be identified and characterized by molecular biological and traditional cultural methods. Recombinant DNA and genomics technologies will be applied to study host/pathogen interactions and to investigate virulence differences between strains of a pathogen.